Select committee: Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee
Conclusion 4
Ninth Report - Major cultural and sporting events
Published 16 Mar 2022
Paragraph 36
Addressed to Department for Culture, Media and Sport
Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee Major cultural and sporting events All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
Since the event’s inception in 2018, the aims for Festival UK* 2022/Unboxed: Creativity in the UK have been vague and ripe for misinterpretation by the press and public at large. We see no evidence to refute such scepticism now. The desire for it to seemingly cater to everyone, everywhere, is a recipe for failure and investing £120 million in something when the Government, by their own admission, “did not know what it was” is an irresponsible use of public money. Despite ambitious “stretch targets” for engagement, just a few months out there remains a worrying lack of detail about how that will be achieved, particularly when it comes to touring projects internationally. We therefore intend to scrutinise how 2022’s events are leveraged overseas in our subsequent inquiry on promoting Britain abroad.
From: Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Ninth Report - Major cultural and sporting events (HC 259), paragraph 36, 16 March 2022
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 24 June 2022 (deadline 16 June 2022).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government welcomes the Committee's report and shares its view on the value of major events, but disagrees with its assessment of UNBOXED and of legacy work, and gives a mixed response on strategy, funding and legislation.
- On a strategy for major events, its "current assessment" is that publishing one "is not an immediate priority". It is establishing a cross-Government Events Team and refreshing the Gold Framework for Major Sporting Events, "for publication later this year".
- On football governance, it will legislate to establish the independent regulator "when parliamentary time allows", with a White Paper "for publication in the summer". It says the legislation "cannot be rushed".
- It "disagrees with the Committee's assessment" of UNBOXED, and on legacy and evaluation it agrees they are critical but disagrees that this is "not currently a priority".
- On the listed events regime, it has "no current plans to undertake a full review of the list", but "will therefore undertake a review" of whether its scope should extend to digital rights.